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The hunt for the largest SSD and hard drive is an ongoing endeavor as manufacturers continue to push the limits of their manufacturing processes.
When considering the largest storage options available, it's important to note that we focus primarily on the best SSD and best hard drive options that are either internal or external. Our selection does not include the best NAS devices but does encompass Direct-Attached Storage (DAS). These products should be accessible for purchase online or directly from retailers.
Beyond sheer size, other factors such as the fastest hard drive and fastest SSD speed, as well as overall performance, play a critical role in our evaluation. Our guide also touches upon the best external hard drive and best portable SSD options available, ensuring that you find a balance between capacity, speed, and portability.
Moreover, in today's digital landscape, having reliable storage is crucial so we encourage you to explore the best cloud storage and best cloud backup services as well, since off-site storage is essential to any secure and reliable storage management solutions. These services also provide an additional layer of security and accessibility for your data, making it accessible from anywhere with an internet connection. If you're looking for more cost-effective solutions, the best free cloud storage services can be just as effective.
With that said, let's dive into our comprehensive guide on the largest SSD and hard drive options available today that meet your specific needs, whether for personal use or for business applications.
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The largest SSD and hard drive in 2024
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We've tested countless storage devices looking for the largest SSD and hard drive models, and we've brought together our top picks in every category below.
The largest SSD on the market
Biggest drive or SSD in the world right now
ExaDrive specializes in extra high capacity 3.5-inch solid state drives for the data center. The biggest model it currently has is the EDDCT100 which retails for a staggering $40,000 or $400 per TB, about 13x the price of the cheapest SSD on a per TB basis (This Leven JS600 drive costs $60 for 1.92TB on Amazon).
Available with a SATA or SAS interface, it offers an unlimited drive write per day for five years (the length of the warranty) thanks partly to the use of SLC technology (which explains the price as well). A cheaper version of the Exadrive, the EDNLT064, is also available and is the second largest solid state drive on the market with a capacity of 64TB but swaps TLC for QLC.
At $10,900 it offers a relatively more palatable price point and a per TB price of only $170. In comparison, 18TB hard drives have a per TB starting from as little as $15 but they are bigger, heavier, consume more power, statistically more likely to fail, noisier and slower.
Honorable mentions to
- The Seagate 60TB SSD that was launched in 2016. It was a prototype but we don't know whether it was sold. I approached Seagate in May 2023 to find out what happened to it.
- Smaller Nimbus Data Exadrive SSD available in 16TB, 32TB, 50TB and 64TB.
- Micron and its two 30.72TB SSDs: The 6500 ION and the 9400 Pro
- Solidigm and its two 30.72TB SSDs: The D5-P5430 (coming in 2024) and the D5-P5316, as well as the 61TB D5-P5336
- Samsung added the PM1643, PM1653 and the PM1733, with capacities up to 30.72TB
- In a similar vein, Kioxia introduced the PM6, CD8P, PM7, CM7 and the CM6
- Memblaze has the PBlaze 6 6930 with a 30.72TB capacity.
The largest HDD on the market
Biggest hard disk drives you can buy right now
As of January 2024, the largest hard disk drive released is a 30TB hard disk drive from Seagate, the Exos Mozaic 3+. End users can't buy it yet as Seagate has prioritized Cloud Service Providers (CSP) and hyperscalers. The drive uses ten HAMR-infused platters of 3TB each and exists as a SATA device, which means that it will be compatible with mainstream hardware (NAS, Desktop PC etc).
We don't know what the pricing is yet but I expect it to cost about $700 when it goes on sale on popular online retailer on Black Friday 2024.
Now, if you want to buy the biggest hard disk drive right now and don't want to wait for the aforementioned 30TB drive to land, then Western Digital has a 24TB hard drive on sale for $650. The WD Gold Enterprise class SATA HDD is a data center HDD but will be more adequate for most usage.
Also present in WD's sprawling portfolio are 26TB, 27TB and 28TB models, part of the Ultrastar DC HC680 range. You can't buy them direct so you will have to contact WD directly should you want to acquire one.
The largest portable HDD on the market
Biggest portable HDD
Hard disk drives are cheap and offer plenty of capacity but they are bound to disappear in a not-so-distant future. Right now, the biggest portable hard disk drive has a capacity of 5TB; it uses a special drive that is slightly bigger than a standard laptop HDD which has a width of 2.5-inch and a height of 7mm.
This one is 12.5mm thick which makes it incompatible with laptops having a 2.5-inch spare bay. Both Seagate and Western Digital have multiple models of that capacity starting from under $100 (WD Elements Portable) during sales (but likely more than $100 if not).
Sadly, given the lack of new products, it seems that hard drive manufacturers have given up on portable and laptop hard disk drives altogether. Given that the sweet spot for external HDD capacity is 4TB and with no 6TB 2.5-inch HDDs planned, portable HDDs are likely to disappear rapidly when cheap large capacity external SSD hit this capacity point and come down in price later this decade.
The largest laptop HDD
Biggest laptop SSD
The Teamgroup QX, a 15.36TB SSD with a SATA interface that makes it compatible with almost all desktops and laptops that have a free 2.5-inch bay, is the largest SSD that can be used in a notebook. It is, according to its manufacturer, the largest SATA SSD with a three year warranty and a 2.56PBW warranty. Despite its target audience, it remains expensive at just over $1699 or around $100 per TB.
Samsung’s 8TB 870 QVO remains the absolute sweet spot and the benchmark for large capacity SSD at less than half the price of the Teamgroup QX ($380 at Newegg). Just bear in mind that it is a SATA drive.
If you want to have a PCIe drive instead, expect to pay a significant premium although the difference in speed will be one magnitude higher thanks to the use of PCIe Gen 4 protocol. Other 8TB SSDs include
The largest removable storage on the market
Biggest removable media
Specifications
Capacity: 12TB
SSDs tends to get the limelight when it comes to storage technology but the sobering reality is that a lot of data worldwide is archived and lives in cold storage, media that requires hours, if not days before it is accessible. Enter tape or more specifically LTO (Linear Tape-Open), a tape technology currently in its 9th iteration that offers up to 18TB capacity on a data cartridge. I chose the previous generation though, LTO-8, as it offers a much better cost-to-capacity ratio with 12TB selling for as little as $48.82 or just over $4 per TB. It offers native transfer speed rates of 360MBps and supports 256-bit AES encryption by default.
Tape though comes with a number of caveats; the price of the drives are exorbitant - in the thousands of dollars. It is a linear storage technology which means that it can take time to retrieve the data stored but it works great for backup and is popular with cloud storage providers. However if your data requirements are in the petabytes and you care more about archival than immediate access, then tape can be a pretty compelling alternative.
A quick back-of-the-napkin calculation shows that you are likely to break even at around 360TB. 30 tapes (about $1500) and a Thunderbolt 3 tape drive (about $4500) will cost you roughly the same as 20 external 18TB HDD (at $300 a piece).
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